Barista Magazine

APR-MAY 2018

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approach to coffee without being too esoteric:
Its website features photos of baristas in lab
coats brewing coffee on the street for con-
fused-but-interested passersby.
If you want to do a coffee bang-bang (two
coffees back-to-back at two different loca-
tions), stroll down the street to either Damn
Fine Coffee Bar or Gaslight Coffee Roasters,
both less than a mile down the street. Damn
Fine serves up tasty shots of coffee from
Metric, and Gaslight has been roasting coffee
and serving ambitious breakfast and lunch
treats since 2012. (A piece of trivia for you:
Gaslight's owner, Zak Rye, was featured on
the cover of the February + March 2009 issue
of Barista Magazine, back when he owned
The Ugly Mug in Ypsilanti, Mich.)
If Gaslight is full (which, if it's the weekend, it
will be), sneak into Estereo—it's not technically
a coffee shop, but with a Modbar and coffee
from Dark Matter, the cocktail bar with a Latin
spirit is sure to make you something tasty (with
or without alcohol, whatever you decide).
C O F F E E I N T H E
N E I G H B O R H O O D
Chicago is unequivocally a city of neighbor-
hoods, and residents of a neighborhood are
committed to their communities. Although
Chicago is the third-largest city in the United
States, it doesn't function like New York,
where you can put a coffee shop on any corner
and fi nd success, or Los Angeles, where hav-
ing a car is expected. Most folks wander into
Le : Hiroshi Sawada, a superstar barista from
Tokyo, joined forces with the team behind Hogsalt
Hospitality to create Sawada Coff ee in the West
Loop. The grungy, industrial space welcomed
a endees of Coff ee Fest Chicago in June 2017 for a
la e art throwdown. Photo by Sarah Allen.
Right: Back of the Yards Coff ee roasts and serves
coff ee in the Back of the Yards neighborhood in
Chicago. Co-owners Mayra Hernandez and Jesse
Iñiguez launched the roastery on Kickstarter, and
pledge a dollar for every bag of beans sold to
farmers in Mexico. Their goal was to enrich their
community on both ends of the supply chain. Photo
courtesy of Back of the Yards Coff ee.
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